High schooler discovers fossil of juvenile dinosaur

Paper and 3D reconstructions of the dinosaur are made open-access.

As our collection of fossils left by non-avian dinosaurs has grown, we've learned that they were impressive in ways that went beyond sheer size. Over millions of years of evolution, the animals also achieved incredible diversity in form, with horns, plates, feathers, and other elaborations. One of the strangest forms appeared in the hadrosaurids, more commonly known as the duck-billed dinosaurs. Many of these species had enormous extensions on the peaks of their skulls, formed by elaborating their nasal passages.

While we're still not sure exactly what the purpose of these features are—ideas range from display to generating loud calls to breathing in a watery environment—we're a bit more sure about how they developed. That's because a high school student came across a fossil skeleton in southern Utah that provides a glimpse of a juvenile of the species. The paper describing the find, as well as all the 3D reconstructions of the animal, have been made open source.

The authors of the paper describe the species in question, Parasaurolophus, as "tube crested." As you can see from the representation above, the tube in question wouldn't seem out of place on one of the monsters of the Alien films. But although it is depicted as just as solid as the leg bones, the use of "tube" is accurate: the structure is hollow, being formed as an extension of the nasal processes of the animal.

Prior to this paper, all we really knew was the final form of the animals' skulls, present on adults. But that changed through the work of Kevin Terris, a high school student (now at Montana State University) who joined members of a paleontology museum on a dig in the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in Utah. During that time, he discovered a fossil of a Parasaurolophus that was only 2.5 m long—about a quarter the size of a full adult. While they're growing, dinosaurs form annual rings of different densities in their bones. Sections across the leg bones of this animal showed that it hadn't formed any, indicating that it was less than a year old at the time.

Large portions of the skeleton were intact, including most of the skull. Rather than the large extension of the top of the skull seen in adults of the species, the juvenile's skull had a rounded crest, which didn't extend much past the regular contours of the dinosaur's head. Taking it to a local hospital, the authors managed to get a CT scan of it, confirming that it was largely hollow and connected with the nasal passages of the animal.

The fossil answered at least one question about this species: it's clear that it grew very quickly. In less than a year, this individual had already reached at least a quarter of its adult size of roughly 10 m.

But it leaves the purpose of the crest an open question. Some ideas, like it being used to make calls or provide a visual cue, could easily have helped adults communicate or find mates. But those functions might not be very important for a juvenile, so the absence of the full structure on this fossil wouldn't be surprising. But enough was present that the structure was large, which keeps some of the other options—enhanced sense of smell or added breathing capacity—as possibilities. And as the authors point out, the animals had to have something since "the crest had to form early in development, simply so that the animals could continue to breathe."

If you're interested in any of this, you have an unprecedented chance to appreciate this fossil. This happens to be Open Access Week, and the journal that published the paper, PeerJ, is one of the journals that is pushing for open access in the scholarly publishing business. This paper certainly fits the bill; not only is the paper itself open access, but the authors have also chosen to make the peer reviewing of the paper transparent. They've also placed all the data they obtained when creating 3D models of the animal's bones up on the figshare site, which hosts scientific data for general access, giving each piece of data a DOI that can be referenced in further publications.

I'll be waiting to see if anyone describes importing the files and making a 3D printout of bits of dinosaur.

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I'll be waiting to see if anyone describes importing the files and making a 3D printout of bits of dinosaur.

I downloaded the Right Half of Skull model, scaled it down to 30% (my printer is small) and tried to slice it, but Slic3r ran out of memory, crashed, and brought the whole OS down with it.

I have nothing better to do today, so I'll continue working on this. I mean, what else is this 3d printer for if not for actual dinosaur bones.

Andy Farke here, one of the authors on the paper. Sorry to hear about the problems--they are indeed pretty big files! We left them that way so that all of the data were there, and so that the data would continue to be useful as printer resolutions & processing power scale up. One thing you might try is downsampling the mesh (using Meshlab or a similar program) to reduce the file size, which shouldn't have a noticeable effect on print quality at the scale you will be printing. You may need to close a few holes in the mesh after that, but hopefully it should work.

Excited to hear that you are playing with the data--this is exactly why we released them into the wild! Good luck!

"the crest had to form early in development, simply so that the animals could continue to breathe."

I'm confused. Is this saying that the dinosaur breathed through the crest? I read most of the rest of the description as simply stating the nasal cavities were extended. But does that imply nostrils at the back of the head? If not, why would a lack of a crest imply an inability to breathe?

As many dinosaurs as there were, you'd think we'd find a lot more fossils.

Yeah, because it's not like fossilization requires very specific conditions to occur, meaning only a very small portion of the fossil record could ever be subject to fossilization. Never mind that we don't know how many fossil records were destroyed throughout human history, by those who either didn't know what they had, or simply didn't care. Much less natural destruction by simple geological processes.

"the crest had to form early in development, simply so that the animals could continue to breathe."

I'm confused. Is this saying that the dinosaur breathed through the crest? I read most of the rest of the description as simply stating the nasal cavities were extended. But does that imply nostrils at the back of the head? If not, why would a lack of a crest imply an inability to breathe?

As I understand it their nasal passages went through their crest, so if the crest wasn't formed - they couldn't breathe. I also believe their nostrils were at the front of their head (not the back). Based on this article, as they aged their crest would continue to extend backwards.

Dinosaurs continue to fascinate me well into adulthood. Just thinking about how long ago they lived and how short human history is in comparison still tickles my sense of wonder and my imagination. Good for that kid that found it too. Great start down a career path!

As many dinosaurs as there were, you'd think we'd find a lot more fossils.

Its all about the geology. The geology in Utah (particularly Eastern and Southern Utah) is practically custom made to preserve...well...anything. My kids particularly like any one of the number of hikes that feature fossilized dino tracks.

Editing to add that it doesn't hurt that pretty much all but the mountain ranges were once under water at various times:

As many dinosaurs as there were, you'd think we'd find a lot more fossils.

Yeah, because it's not like fossilization requires very specific conditions to occur, meaning only a very small portion of the fossil record could ever be subject to fossilization. Never mind that we don't know how many fossil records were destroyed throughout human history, by those who either didn't know what they had, or simply didn't care. Much less natural destruction by simple geological processes.

It is an unfortunate truth to know not the full extent that our planet's history has been wrecked by humans looking to mount pretty things on their walls or inhale dusts to increase sexual potency. Le sigh.

Open access (OA) is the practice of providing unrestricted access via the Internet to peer-reviewed scholarly research. It is most commonly applied to scholarly journal articles, but it is also increasingly being provided to theses, book chapters,[2] and scholarly monographs.

I'll be waiting to see if anyone describes importing the files and making a 3D printout of bits of dinosaur.

I downloaded the Right Half of Skull model, scaled it down to 30% (my printer is small) and tried to slice it, but Slic3r ran out of memory, crashed, and brought the whole OS down with it.

I have nothing better to do today, so I'll continue working on this. I mean, what else is this 3d printer for if not for actual dinosaur bones.

Andy Farke here, one of the authors on the paper. Sorry to hear about the problems--they are indeed pretty big files! We left them that way so that all of the data were there, and so that the data would continue to be useful as printer resolutions & processing power scale up. One thing you might try is downsampling the mesh (using Meshlab or a similar program) to reduce the file size, which shouldn't have a noticeable effect on print quality at the scale you will be printing. You may need to close a few holes in the mesh after that, but hopefully it should work.

Excited to hear that you are playing with the data--this is exactly why we released them into the wild! Good luck!

I wonder if they could have been functionally similar to deer antlers.

It is doubtful, a deers antlers are shed every season and new ones grow in. If it were more like an American pronghorn where the horns don't shed it would have a carotene shell around it. This is not the case either, evidence has been found of skin imprints showing the skin texture. All of this being said, I am a Civil Engineering major at Montana State University with a bunch of paleontology friends, so I could be getting this wrong.

How can the skeleton of a dinosaur copyrighted / trademarked / registered ?

Many museums can be tight-fisted with their 3D data, or even photographic images. Sometimes it is because researchers don't want other teams to publish on a dataset before the data collectors can publish. Sometimes it is because admins are paranoid that someone else might profit off of making 3D prints of fragmentary leg bones, or a coffee table book of dinosaur teeth. Sometimes it is because they want to encourage foot traffic to the museum (and one could make a strong case for this in the instance of important collections in developing countries). Sometimes it is just institutional inertia. So although the skeletons themselves can't be copyrighted, many museums effectively do so by restricting the purposes for which images, casts, and 3D scans can be used.

In any case, as a paleontologist and a museum curator, I think museums send extremely mixed messages when they clamp down on data this way. On the one hand, we argue that these fossils are part of the world's heritage and that commercialization of fossils is inherently against the purposes of science. On the other hand, restrictive usage agreements effectively say that fossils are a commercial commodity that are the property of the museum. Although I sympathize with museums wanting to get revenue streams from depictions of their fossils and to control use of specimen images (e.g., I wouldn't like the fossils being used in a creationist pamphlet), the reality is that most museums (perhaps with the exceptions of the largest and best funded) get very little from these attempts at licensing. Being in the open access crowd, I tend to think that the most good comes from making fossils available to the most people. This is why we released the 3D data for the new dinosaur skeleton!

As one final addition, we (the authors of the study) created a website detailing the specimen. The page includes 3D models that can be viewed in most web browsers (except IE--sorry!), which will save you a download if you just want to see what the animal looks like.

Although I sympathize with museums wanting to get revenue streams from depictions of their fossils and to control use of specimen images (e.g., I wouldn't like the fossils being used in a creationist pamphlet), the reality is that most museums (perhaps with the exceptions of the largest and best funded) get very little from these attempts at licensing.

An option that might better work for places like museums and other public interest sites might be to make the data available with a "Pay what you want" gateway, with a minimum price of $0. That would allow everybody who wanted access would be unfettered by monetary requirements while those with the means and inclination to support the institution providing the information would have a simple and convenient manner in which to do so.

Far out idea: if the nostrils are actually at the top end of this protrusion, maybe it was used as a snorkel, so the animals could either portage or forage through bodies of water.

That was mentioned in the paper though it doesnt quite explain why the absence of a snorkel would benefit an adolescent. You would think they would be born with a nearly complete bill in that case.

The best way to conceptualize the crest is to think of your own nose. Imagine that your nose swelled up to a giant size, and the nostrils stayed right where they were. This is exactly the situation in Parasaurolophus. The crest was most likely used for display (hence its big size) as well as sound production (with the nasal passages running through the middle). It started out small, perhaps because babies didn't need to worry as much about these things. Also, it would be tough to fit all of that in the egg. In any case, the nostril is in the wrong place for a snorkel, and these dinosaurs are thought to have spent most of their time on land.

Similar delayed growth happens with modern animals that have "bizarre" structures--sheep and goats don't grow their horns until after birth, for instance.

As one final addition, we (the authors of the study) created a website detailing the specimen. The page includes 3D models that can be viewed in most web browsers (except IE--sorry!), which will save you a download if you just want to see what the animal looks like.

Well, that's one way of making sure I don't waste time there during work hours. Once I get home, though...

Far out idea: if the nostrils are actually at the top end of this protrusion, maybe it was used as a snorkel, so the animals could either portage or forage through bodies of water.

That was mentioned in the paper though it doesnt quite explain why the absence of a snorkel would benefit an adolescent. You would think they would be born with a nearly complete bill in that case.

The best way to conceptualize the crest is to think of your own nose. Imagine that your nose swelled up to a giant size, and the nostrils stayed right where they were. This is exactly the situation in Parasaurolophus. The crest was most likely used for display (hence its big size) as well as sound production (with the nasal passages running through the middle). It started out small, perhaps because babies didn't need to worry as much about these things. Also, it would be tough to fit all of that in the egg. In any case, the nostril is in the wrong place for a snorkel, and these dinosaurs are thought to have spent most of their time on land.

Similar delayed growth happens with modern animals that have "bizarre" structures--sheep and goats don't grow their horns until after birth, for instance.

Andy thanks for the up close and personal and welcome to ars. I think if you scan the science section routinely you will learn an awful lot as the arsian community includes a multitude of experts in a variety of fields and many are willing to spend the time and effort to educate the interested.

As one final addition, we (the authors of the study) created a website detailing the specimen. The page includes 3D models that can be viewed in most web browsers (except IE--sorry!), which will save you a download if you just want to see what the animal looks like.

Very nice!

While not all shading types seem to work, I was able to use view about half of them on IE11.